Strikes Have Followed Me All My Life: A South African Autobiography By Emma Mashinini
Strikes Have Followed Me All My Life: A South African Autobiography By Emma Mashinini
Softcover
ISBN 9781770102279
Publisher: Picador Africa 2012
Used - Very Good. This book is in very good condition. The wraps have some slight/limited signs of wear and the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. The wraps are slightly shelf rubbed with very slight knocking at the back. The blocks have some minor marks. This book has clearly been well maintained and looked after thus far.
The book is about Emma Mashinini, Secretary of the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union. Emma was born to a slightly better circumstance than most, living in the backyard of a white suburb, instead of the homelands, or townships where black South Africans were usually forced to live under apartheid. She started working in a textile factory and rose to become the founder of a new union. Shortly after this, she was arrested without charge under the South African Terrorism Act. She was mentally tortured and given subpar conditions in which to live during her stay at multiple prisons. At one heart touching moment in the book, she nearly panics because she cannot remember the name of one of her children. The book served as the first time that her children will ever know this. Upon leaving prison, she resumes union work, and must deal with a variety of psychological problems. This book was written against threats of death from the South African government, and chronicles the life of a woman who endured psychological and physical torture for the cause of a free democratic government in South Africa.
